Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire 6)

Marcus took him back to the ground again, though he kept him stretched out pretty well, his toes barely brushing the floor. What contraption was he up against? Thomas couldn't remember what all was in the room, so distracted by what Marcus was going to do to him here.

"All points - head, shoulders, heels - stay right against these bars, pet. Or I stop. " Stop what? Then Thomas felt the whip tighten on his hips so he had to pull against him to stay in position. His mind as well as his body froze as Marcus' mouth closed over his bare cock.

Marcus had mouthed him there before, usually after he'd wrestled Thomas to the ground to tease him with the passing caress of his warm breath, the playful sandpaper stroke of his jaw in the late afternoon. But never like this, where Thomas felt the full blissful suction of his mouth taking him deep while Marcus held the whip in a tight grip compressing his ass cheeks.

He used the w

hip to move Thomas as he wished, making him have to focus on obeying Marcus' order against Marcus' own strength, which had the effect of stretching the rubber band reaction in his lower body even tauter.

When Marcus' tongue flicked on Thomas' head, he gasped. Though he gripped the chain with both hands to try to stay still, he couldn't. Oh God, there was no way. . . He tried to hold his heels and shoulders in a fixed position as Marcus had demanded, but his body swayed and moved.

"Master, I can't. . . Oh God. . . "

Marcus removed his mouth. With swift and ruthless functionality, he closed something over Thomas' chest, shoulders, throat and face and snapped it closed, then did the same across his legs at mid-thigh, leaving just his groin and head area free. It was a tight, constricting fit, making Thomas grunt with need. Marcus ignored him, went back to work on him with his mouth.

He'd put him in some sort of modified iron maiden. Under the blindfold, Thomas was locked in darkness, in the hell-born pleasure of that mouth, its slow friction up and down his length, the lash of the tongue, the addition of strong fingers, moving between his legs to find his rim again, teasing his hips into a jerky rhythm as Marcus slid several fingers back in. It was the knife edge of pleasure, cutting him deep, but he hung onto the blade with both hands, needing it too much to fall off, even if it cut him to the core and split him in half.

Marcus was performing long, slow glides along his length with his mouth. Rocking back and forth on his Master's fingertips, Thomas couldn't contain his response. He made a strangled sound of pain, an attempted warning, but rather than pulling back, Marcus took him deeper, hand curling on Thomas' hip, the cylindrical shape of the whip pressed against his skin, between hot palms and his damp flesh.

As Thomas jerked forward, jetting, Marcus took his release into the back of his throat with expert precision, growling his approval as Thomas cried out with the power of the sensation.

He rocked and bucked, hearing the rhythmic clank of the chains, their clatter against the iron maiden as he jerked. Somewhere else in the room, another slave released among the sounds of punishment and flogging.

Then as he was still shuddering, Marcus pulled his mouth away, removed his fingers. Rising, he moved behind Thomas.

Taking a firm, possessive hold of Thomas' throat with the whip hand, Marcus reached down, put those three fingers back in, thrusting, thrusting. Then a fourth finger. Then a fifth.

All five, stretching the way as Marcus slowly, inexorably worked his hand in until he was fully there, deep in the rectum, negotiating the curves, seeming to know Thomas' body inside and out. His fingers curled and he was fisting Thomas, his forearm between his ass cheeks, his wrist stretching him open.

Marcus had never fisted him before, but Thomas was so open to him in every way now that he trusted, didn't tense, let Marcus all the way in and suddenly found himself fuller than he'd ever been, an indescribable feeling. He thought he'd finished climaxing, but he found he was wrong. His cock jetted anew, as if Marcus was milking a reservoir Thomas hadn't known he'd had, taking the orgasm to a cataclysmic level.

Thomas' shout became a scream, all the thoughts in his mind exploding so there was nothing but this second in time, the universe stopping as everything else vanished.

And even then Marcus was not done with him, still ruthlessly working him, keeping Thomas screaming, convulsing in the restraint of the iron maiden as if in a seizure.

He might have blacked out at last. He wasn't sure. All he knew was when he finally came down, he was hanging limply against the cuffs, his shoulder joints aching like hell. His mouth was open, lips stretched back to draw shuddering gasps.

He could hear at least two of the Masters murmuring to one another in appreciation of the stimulation to their own scene, could sense the eyes of the other subs on him.

Perhaps envious. Perhaps counting themselves lucky their Masters didn't strip them so raw. But it didn't matter. He was Marcus'. There was no thinking about that, no choice.

His back stung like holy hell and his cock felt wrung out but all he wanted, desperately needed, was Marcus. Enough to beg.

"Please touch me. "

He needed intimacy, the emotion behind the physical punch of what Marcus had just done to him.

Marcus moved around him, so close to Thomas' body Thomas felt the brush of his slacks against his knees. The whip slithered over his buttocks and fell to the outside of his legs as Marcus dropped it. Grasping Thomas' waist, a proprietary touch, he leaned in, pressed his lips to Thomas' throat just below his ear, then across his cheekbone. The forehead, the slope of his nose. The eyes beneath the blindfold.

Thomas stood in the manacles, vibrating, overwhelmed with words he couldn't say.

Didn't know if he knew how to say them, because they contained all the heartbreak of the world mixed with its ephemeral joy. Waking to the aroma of breakfast when he was eight. Feeling the heat of the setting sun on his skin while falling asleep on Kate's back at ten.

Turning and seeing Marcus for the very first time. Moments too powerful to be contained by the human heart and therefore having a peculiar way of making the soul hurt, as if there was something to mourn in the midst of the happiness. As if happiness itself couldn't exist without shadows to define it.

Thomas parted his lips. He understood his Master would kiss his mouth when he desired to do so, and he was embracing his pleasure by staying still. But when Marcus at last cupped his jaw and pressed his mouth to Thomas' lips, he made a soft noise, a breath of sound into that welcome place, teasing Marcus' tongue, everything in him straining, needing. He never wanted Marcus to remove the blindfold, for truth and desire were easier to hold onto in this cleansing darkness.

"Yours," he said abruptly, a hoarse whisper into that heated cavern. "Always. " He'd said it earlier, in a different way. But he wanted Marcus to know it, to realize it was the one thing he could give him without reservation, no matter if everything else in his life took him away from the one thing he wanted above all others, even his painting. Actually, the two were intertwined, expressions of the soul without which he was just a shell. He supposed it was no wonder Marcus was a gallery owner.